Library of Congress's Blog, page 38

Researcher Stories: Civil War Photographs, “Chlorophyll Prints” and Robert Schultz

One of Robert Schultz’s chlorophyll print process images, made from a Civil War photograph of an unidentified Union soldier and his daughter. Photo: Prints and Photographs Division.

For years, artist Robert Schultz has made creative reuse of historical Civil War-era images, developing photographs from the Library’s Liljenquist Family Collection of Civil War Portraits in the flesh of tree and plant leaves found on former battlefields. In turn, the Library has acquired some of his art.

Tell us about your background.

I grew up and went to college in Iowa, then did graduate degrees in creative writing and literature at Cornell University. I taught at Cornell; the University of Virginia; my alma mater, Luther College; and Roanoke College, where I served as the John P. Fishwick Professor of English until my retirement from teaching in 2018. Since then, I’ve worked full time as a writer and artist.

Over the years, I have published seven books — poetry, a novel, biography, memoir — but my work in the visual arts is a fairly recent development. Especially since my retirement from teaching, I have begun to make and exhibit work, most of which is done in photographic “alternative” processes — camera-less work in the chlorophyll print process and creative uses of a scanner.

How did you come to use leaves in your art?

I learned the chlorophyll print process from its modern originator, Binh Danh. I first saw his work in an exhibition that traveled to Roanoke, Virginia — big tropical leaves with portraits of Khmer Rouge victims in them and smaller leaves with images out of the Vietnam-U.S. war.

They floored me, and I started writing poems in response. When I contacted Binh with questions, he responded generously, and we struck up a correspondence. Then, when Hollins University brought him to Roanoke for a residency, he and I met and began to travel to Civil War sites, where he took photographs and I made notes for poems and essays.

This was the beginning of a collaboration that has yielded two books and two art exhibitions. When we prepared the exhibition “War Memoranda” for Roanoke’s Taubman Museum in 201), Binh taught me his process and I took on the task of making Civil War-era portraits in leaves to accompany Binh’s portraits of Vietnam-era soldiers he had made in mats of grass-like leaves.

Why, in your estimation, is chlorophyll print making especially apt for memorializing the Civil War?

My very first glimpse of Binh’s leaf prints made me think instantly of Walt Whitman, and the central metaphor of “Leaves of Grass” is the guiding trope of my work: “Tenderly will I use you, curling grass, / It may be you transpire from the breasts of young men, / It may be if I had known them I would have loved them.”

For Whitman, and now for me, the grass and leaves are “hieroglyphics” and “uttering tongues” speaking elegies in spring’s renewals. Also, for Whitman and for me, the grass is a figure for the American ideal of democracy, “Growing among black folks as among white, / Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff, I give them the same, I receive them the same.”

When did you first use the Library’s collections, and what is a favorite photo or two you’ve discovered?

In 2012, the Ric Burns Civil War documentary on PBS drew heavily from Drew Gilpin Faust’s 2008 book, “This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War,” and made liberal use of portraits held in the Library’s Liljenquist Family Collection of Civil War Portraits. That’s when I became aware of the magnificent Liljenquist collection of cased daguerreotypes, tintypes and ambrotypes.

That these portraits were made available on the Library’s website in high-resolution digital images made my work possible. I could download a portrait, print it onto a plastic transparency, place the transparency onto a leaf and put it out for the sun to do its work. Under clear areas of the transparency the leaf would bleach, but under dark areas the shielded parts of the leaf would retain their natural coloration, making the image in the flesh of the leaf.

I was drawn particularly to the portraits of very young soldiers whose expressions are so open, who look so vulnerable. In their new uniforms they appear mildly astonished by their unfolding fate. I’m thinking, for instance, of this unidentified young soldier in a Union uniform and forage cap or Sergeant William T. Biedler of Company C, Mosby’s Virginia Cavalry Regiment, or this unidentified young African American soldier in a Union uniform. I am drawn also to the heartbreaking images of family members in mourning, such as this unidentified girl in mourning dress holding a framed photograph of her father.

Robert Schultz. Photo:

Which works of yours has the Library acquired?

Tom Liljenquist has acquired five of my portraits for the Library. They are based on an African American soldier in a Union uniform holding a rifle-musket and a revolver; the young soldier in a Union uniform and forage cap mentioned above; an officer in Confederate uniform with his wife and baby; a boy holding a photograph of a soldier in Confederate uniform atop a Bible; and Mathew Brady’s 1862 portrait of Walt Whitman.

It is ideal that these pieces will be held with their source material — the small, cased portraits — and near the Library’s great Whitman collection. My work on the leaf prints began with visits to the Library and the Liljenquist Collection, and the Library is the best possible repository for the chlorophyll prints. I know the work will receive excellent care, and I’m honored to have my work made available to its researchers and visitors.

What are you working on now?

A chlorophyll print is a one-of-a-kind piece; a leaf cannot be editioned. So, I have been using my scanner to make digital images of leaf prints that have not yet been cast in resin for framing.

In one new series, “Being Seen,” I scan a leaf portrait, then enlarge the image on my computer and crop it tightly, showing just the face from eyes to mouth. In this work, I’m sharing the intense gaze I have encountered on my computer monitor while preparing images — repairing scratches, adjusting contrast and so on — for use in my processes. The gaze peering intently from my monitor seemed to ask hard questions about the human cost of war.

In another series, “How the Dead Speak,” I make compositions on the scanner using leaf print portraits in combination with fresh plant specimens of various kinds. I make these scans in a darkened room with the scanner’s lid removed. The resulting image shows the composition against a deep, black background. In this work, inspired by Whitman’s great poem, “This Compost,” the dead speak in leaves — in nature’s cycles.

I’ve continued to explore new uses for leaf print portraits. Now I’m making poet boxes, inspired by Joseph Cornell’s three-dimensional compositions made in found wooden boxes. I’ve found a variety of old boxes in antique shops and am currently working on boxes for Walt Whitman, Ezra Pound and Robinson Jeffers. For instance, traveling in California I visited Jeffers’ Tor House, where I was able to gather a few stones, eucalyptus pips and other materials that I will arrange in my box with short poem excerpts and chlorophyll prints of the poet.

I am spending less time in my studio, however, and more time at my desk, working on a novel in which the 1939 World’s Fair figures prominently. Its title will be “How the Future Was.”

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It’s As If It Was Written in…Clay. For 4,200 Years.

One of the Library’s cuneiform tablets, more than 4,200 years old. African and Middle Eastern Division. 

This is a guest post by Leah Knobel, a public affairs specialist in the Office of Communications.

Perhaps the oldest pieces in the Library’s collection of 171 million items are a group of clay tablets from ancient Mesopotamia that date to the dawn of civilization.

The tablets contain an ancient writing system known as cuneiform developed by the Sumerians, who thrived during the third millennium B.C.  Sumerians influenced culture and development beyond their original home in Mesopotamia (present-day southern Iraq) — the site of the world’s earliest civilization.

The materials used to create cuneiform — clay and reeds — were both readily available in this region at the time. Initially, cuneiform signs were pictograms but later became based on symbols, causing some ambiguity in their interpretation.

The Library acquired this collection of cuneiform materials in 1929 from art dealer Kirkor Minassian. The items were part of Minassian’s collection of Islamic book-bindings, manuscripts, textiles and ceramic and metal objects that demonstrate the development of writing and book art in the Middle East.

The oldest tablets in the collection date from the reign of Gudea of Lagash, from 2144–2124 B.C. That makes them more than 4,200 years old.

The tablets’ contents are diverse. Several contain inscriptions pertaining to the receipt of and payment for goods and services, while others appear to have served as school exercise tablets, used by scribes learning the cuneiform writing system. These latter tablets were originally unfired, as they were meant to be erased and reused; the account records, on the other hand, were fired and stored for future reference.

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China’s Colossal Encyclopedia

Detail from a page in the Yongle encyclopedia. Asian Division. 

This is a guest post by Qi Qui, head of scholarly services in the Asian Division. It first appeared in the Library of Congress Magazine’s March/April 2021 issue.

At the dawn of the 15th century, four decades before Johannes Gutenberg introduced the metal movable-type printing press in Europe, the third emperor of China’s Ming dynasty, Zhu Di, ordered the kingdom’s leading scholars to compile a comprehensive work containing all forms of knowledge known to Chinese civilization.

The resulting Yongle encyclopedia, named after the emperor’s reign, comprised 22,937 hand-copied sections bound into 11,095 volumes.

Covered in striking yellow silk, these volumes incorporated a diverse range of topics, from history, art and the Confucian classics to astronomy, medicine and divination. Most of the content was drawn from sections of earlier publications. To facilitate quick searching, compilers arranged entries phonetically into groups according to a standardized rhyming scheme.

More than a century later, after a disastrous fire nearly destroyed the encyclopedia, the Jiajing emperor, Zhu Houcong, ordered a copy of the entire set. A team of 109 court scholars labored over five years before finally completing an exact reproduction in 1567.

Over ensuing decades, however, the original edition was completely lost. Even now, how and when it went missing remains a mystery. Fortunately, parts of the duplicate set have survived — but just barely. Today, only 420 volumes, or 4 percent of the complete set, remain. This includes two newly discovered volumes that sold for more than $9 million at an auction in Paris in July 2020.

Of these, the Library of Congress holds 41 unique, inconsecutive volumes in its Asian Division. Acquired during the early 20th century via purchase and donation, they form the largest assemblage of Yongle specimens outside Asia.

Thanks to collaboration among custodial, cataloging, conservation and digitization teams, the Library’s Yongle collection is now fully cataloged and undergoing careful preservation work. Upon completion of a digitization project in progress, all 41 volumes of this 450-year-old encyclopedia will be made available online for readers around the world to study and appreciate up close.

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Researcher Stories: Armand Lione and the Search for Native American History in D.C.

Armand Lione.

American Indians walked the land where the nation’s capital city now stands long before Europeans arrived. Local historian Armand Lione researches that history at the Library.

Tell us about your background and what inspired your research project.

I earned a Ph.D. in pharmacology and toxicology at the University of Rochester in the 1970s and have worked since 1986 as a reproductive toxicologist in D.C. In 2008, I started visiting Melbourne, Australia, and I went back every other year through 2020. Indigenous issues are very important in Australia. When I came back to D.C. in spring 2016, I decided to start researching the Native people of Washington.

I live only a block away from Garfield Park and the former Daniel Carroll Estate on Capitol Hill. To my surprise, those locations turn out to be two of the best documented sites related to the Anacostan Indians (the Latin version of their original name, Nacotchtanks) who once lived in what is now Washington, D.C.

What resources have you used at the Library?

I’ve consulted books from the collections, including works by former National Park Service chief archaeologist Stephen Potter and historian Helen Rountree, as well as articles from online databases — full access to JSTOR at the Library was very productive. I’ve also used maps, such as Andrew Ellicott’s 1790 map, which labeled the eastern branch of the Potomac River as the “Anna Kostia,” and images, including drawings by John White from the 1500s that provide visual records of everyday life among the Algonquins.

What are some striking stories from your Library research?

Samuel Proudfit, in his 1889 work about the Native history of D.C., refers repeatedly to block 736. So, I visited the Geography and Map Division and asked if any information was available about the block. To my pleasant surprise, a staffer brought out a map of the Daniel Carroll Estate. On it, I found there was a spring, which helped explain why Carroll chose the site for his estate and why the Natives before him chose to live there.

Two personal journals also stood out to me — those of colonist and explorer Henry Fleet and physician Almon Rockwell — because they reveal some of the character of the men and aspects of everyday life in the 17th and 19th centuries.

Fleet was captured by the Anacostans in the early 1620s and lived among them for five years until he was 27. Reading his journal, which I accessed in the Main Reading Room, allowed me to document how little he actually said about living with the Indians. “I spent my youth with the Natives,” he wrote just once.

Rockwell, whose journal is also available through the Main Reading Room, was present at the deaths of Presidents Lincoln and Garfield, and he oversaw the construction of Garfield Park in honor of the fallen president. Unfortunately, Rockwell never commented on the Native remains his workmen found when creating the park.

Tell us how you share your findings.

I publish a blog and share my research on a website that features an interactive map showing locations around D.C. where artifacts have been found.

In addition, at the encouragement of Ruth Trocolli, the chief archaeologist of Washington, who is also very interested the city’s Native history, I started the D.C. Native History Project. It consists of a growing group of volunteers who work with local Pistacaway/Conoy tribe members to get recognition for the Anacostan heritage of the area. Our Facebook site now has nearly 150 members.

Also, in 2019 and again this summer, I set up a display in Garfield Park for a day to talk with neighbors about the Native history of the park and Native artifacts found on the Carroll Estate. The Washington Post wrote about my display this year.

Any advice for others who might be interested in researching a topic of interest at the Library?

Delving into the incredible holdings of the Library is made much easier and more productive with the help of the Library’s excellent staff. Talking with an expert staff member about your research interest may open up avenues you haven’t considered and lead you deeper into the wonderful materials in the Library!

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Friends, Gifts & Giving: Kaffie Milikin

Kaffie Milikin. Photo: Shawn Miller.

A version of this article first appeared in the November/December 2021 issue of the Library of Congress Magazine.

This week, the Library launched its new Friends of the Library of Congress program, which brings together a community of donors committed to preserving this nation’s cultural memory. This group is integral in advancing our mission to engage, inspire, and inform and help make everything possible from digital resources to public programming to exhibitions.

We thought it would be a good time to talk to Kaffie Milikin, the Library’s director of development, about the her job and the importance of outside gifts in the overall mission of the Library.

Describe your work at the Library.

In a word — thrilling. Each day, I work with some of the most passionate people who want to advance the Library’s mission. My job and the job of every member of my team is to identify philanthropic resources to support that mission. We seek to connect equally passionate philanthropists with the work of the Library. It’s that simple. It’s also very competitive; there are so many worthy causes and opportunities.

How did you prepare for your position?

I graduated with a degree in international studies and quickly realized that I had confused it with my love of foreign travel. Since academia always appealed to me, I thought being a professor was the right path. I am proudly “all but dissertation.” It was when my father died that I thought about philanthropy. My mother endowed a scholarship at the University of Florida, and it was a therapeutic experience. My dissertation became unimportant, and an opportunity to learn about fundraising opened at the Whitman Walker Clinic in Washington, D.C. From there, I worked at Georgetown University, George Washington University and the Smithsonian Institution, learning from the ground up. So, my nerd background coupled with my professional experience prepared me to take on the challenge of building a strong philanthropic foundation for the Library.

Why is private support for institutions like the Library so important?

Although the U.S. Congress has been the Library’s largest benefactor, support from the private sector amplifies the Library’s core mission; it allows the Library to reach a bit further, stretch in new directions without sacrificing what it does best — preserving and providing access to a rich, diverse and enduring source of knowledge to inform, inspire and engage people everywhere in intellectual and creative pursuits. Our recent success in securing a record $15 million from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation rested on the collaboration and experience of Library staff and their deep knowledge of audiences and collections and purpose. And, yet, every gift matters from every person whether it is $15 or $15 million. Those gifts educate new interns, allow for the acquisition of collection items, make possible new exhibitions and expand our important public-facing initiatives like the Gershwin Prize for Popular Song and the National Book Festival.

What memorable experiences have you had at the Library?

In my first few days, I was invited to tour the Preservation Directorate. The Library’s head of book conservation, Shelly Smith, showed me Lincoln’s second inaugural address — the handwritten version and the printed copy believed to be the one from which he read. Whew. It brought up some powerful emotions. When we share the treasures of the Library with our donors, whether on a special tour or through one of the exhibitions, we want to evoke those same powerful feelings about the Library, its staff and collections and the importance of its mission.

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Pre-Prohibition Mixology!

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The bar at the Hoffman House hotel, New York, 1890, featuring the famous/scandalous painting, “Nymphs and Satyr.”  H.A. Thomas & Wylie. Prints and Photographs Division.

There are several methods of carrying out social anthropology research on times past. You might conduct a study of demographic and economic charts, read newspapers of the era (paying special attention to the ads) or consult best-seller lists of books and music.

Or you might check the liquor cabinet.

This brings us to a delightfully curated selection of Library bartender manuals, “American Mixology: Recipe Books from the Pre-Prohibition Era,” put together by Alison Kelly, a reference and research specialist in the Science, Technology & Business Division. The collection is composed of 10 cocktail recipe books, from 1869 to 1911, that form a “cross-section of pre-Prohibition cocktail culture in America,” as Alison puts it. These books are available online, so if you’re of legal age, you can shake up a Champagne Cobbler or Knickerbocker Punch and party (responsibly) like it’s 1869.

Both of those drinks are from “Haney’s Steward & Barkeeper’s Manual.”  While unregulated alcohol was poured down the hatch in all manners of times and places, cocktail culture was a slightly to greatly more refined art. The cocktail was the cultured drink of a sophisticate who wanted something more upscale than beer and less intoxicating that 100-proof rotgut.

“Scientific Bar-Keeping,” 1884. E.N. Cook & Co. Science, Business & Technology Division.

Ergo, the need for a top-shelf barman (almost always men at the time) to know his trade, to know how to combine alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages to create a uniquely satisfying choice. Your shelf needed wines, whiskeys, liqueurs, champagnes, cognacs, bitters, syrups, juices, jiggers, garnishes, ices, zests, mixers, modifiers, muddlers, sodas, seltzers, strainers, swizzle sticks, a shaker and — of course — a proper wardrobe. According to Haney’s, the mid-19th century bartender dressed the part: “A long white apron is almost an indispensable requisite behind a bar; and in summer time a white linen coat presents a tidy appearance.”

Others wrote for the everyman. Jacob Grohusko, author of “Jack’s Manual,” stressed that his 1908 and 1910 editions were not intended to be one of the “literary marvels,” but a handbook for the “prince of good fellows” who was mixing up, say, a good Tom Collins for his friends.

Cocktail lounges were largely gentlemen’s establishments, refined but still a bit racy. The upscale Hoffman House hotel, a New York landmark in the chromolithograph at the top of this post, was considered the unofficial headquarters of Tammany Hall politicians. William “Boss” Tweed lived at the hotel for a time. Grover Cleveland was living there when he was elected to his second term as president.

The hotel bar, meanwhile, was famously (or infamously) the home of the William-Adolphe Bouguereau painting, “Nymphs and Satyr,” which featured female nudes. It was so scandalous that people came to the bar to gawk. Hotel management graciously hung it across from a huge mirror  — so  patrons could catch glimpses of its reflection without having to suffer the embarrassment of being seen looking at it.

During this era, bourbon, rum and gin were the staples of the barman’s trade. Vodka and tequila were rare. Trendy drinks, most of which are now lost to time, had colorful names. You could sip shrubs, flips, smashes, toddies and dozens of punches, including those made of parsnips.

The premier drink of the post-Civil War years, according to Haney’s, was the julep, which still abides today.

“Of all the productions of the bar the julep is, without question, the chef d’ouvre (masterpiece),” wrote Haney’s. “It is essentially and originally American, and is made to perfection in the Southern States where it is universally popular.” The best of all, the publication said, was the mint julep.

“Harry Johnson’s New and Improved Bartender’s Manual,” 1882. Science, Business & Technology Division.

Here’s Haney’s recipe:

Fill a large bar glass with thinly shaved ice, then top with a few mint sprigs and a tablespoon of white sugar. Add in 1.5 wine glasses of the “finest cognac.” Drop in a few berries (it doesn’t say what kind) and a couple of slices of orange. Shake. Add a splash of port or Jamaican rum.  Sprinkle with some more sugar; garnish with more berries and another sprig of mint in the center. Serve with a straw.

Wait — a mint julep without bourbon? Is this a misprint? A bad joke?

You’ll note that this was in 1869. The first Kentucky Derby was six years later, in 1875. The Bluegrass State’s most famous product, along with racehorses, was and is bourbon. The mint julep was already a popular drink of the era, but people drank it at the Derby with homegrown bourbon instead of rum and cognac. Today, nearly 150 years later, the standard mint julep recipe is simple syrup (sugar dissolved in water) and bourbon poured over crushed ice and garnished with mint sprigs. That’s it.

That’s what we mean about cultural anthropology, seeing how the same drink (or drinks) have evolved over the decades. The Kentucky Derby became an annual cultural event across the nation and its version of the mint julep did, too.

The idea that cocktails were a self-conscious act of refinement was a daily reality of the era, too. In 1898, Joseph Haywood published “Mixology: The Art of Preparing All Kinds of Drinks.” It sold for $1. Adjusting for inflation, that’s about  $30 in 2021. It was intended for the upscale set and Haywood made no bones about it. He saw cocktails as an American art form.

“…from time immemorial, men have indulged in some particular social drink, according to the custom or mannerisms of their respective countries,” he wrote in the introduction. “We, the people of these United States have more or less penchant for having our drinks mixed; hence, ‘Mixology’ … The mixologist who who concocts his beverages in a tasteful and artistic m.anner is a genuine public benefactor, providing he uses wholesome ingredients in the compounding thereof.”

More than a century later, any good bartender would agree.

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New York Yacht Club cocktail lounge, circa 1901. Photo: Wurts Brothers. Prints and Photographs Division.

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Native American Maps (and Ideas) that Shaped the Nation

Territories of the People of the Long House in 1720. Map: Henry Louis Morgan. Geography and Map Division. 

Kelly Bilz, a 2020 librarian in residence in the Geography and Map Division, wrote a short piece on this map for the Library of Congress Magazine‘s May/June issue. It’s been expanded significantly here by Jalondra Jackson, an intern in the Office of Communications. 

The United States is built over the already existing identities and place names of Native Americans who lived in North America for thousands of years before European settlers arrived, a fact borne out by scanning the modern map of the nation.

From Alabama to Alaska, from Mississippi to Massachusetts, about half of all state names are taken directly or indirectly from Native American cultures and languages, including Oklahoma, Kentucky, Utah, Missouri, Michigan and North and South Dakota.

These historical fingerprints are a good thing to remember during Native American Heritage Month because, as the Library’s collections document, the influence of Native Americans on the nation’s identity goes much deeper.

Let’s take the map above as an example.

It looks like an early rendering of New York (named for the British Duke of York and Albany), but is actually the territory of the indigenous Haudenosaunee, also known as the Iroquois Confederacy or Six Nations, as it existed in 1720. The Haudenosaunee (Ho-de-no-SHOW-nee) nations had been founded on the territory of what is now New York centuries earlier.

The map’s full title is “Map of Ho-De-No-Sau-Nee-Ga: Or The Territories Of The People Of The Long House.” It shows the “names of their villages, lakes, rivers, streams & ancient localities, and the courses of their principal trails.”

Haudenosaunee  is the word for the wood and bark houses that extended families, or clans, lived in. The houses mostly ranged from 80 to 120 feet long, with interior rooms connected by a central hallway. (“Iroquois” is of French origin, and not how the Haudenosaunee generally refer to themselves.)

The Long House at the Seneca Arts and Culture Center. Photo: Courtesy of Michael Galban.

The original nations of the confederacy were the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga and Seneca, with the Tuscarora added later.

But it was the Haudenosaunee’s constitution, the Great Law of Peace, that proved far more influential on life in America. Benjamin Franklin, one of the nation’s Founding Fathers, was intrigued by how the Great Law balanced power among local and regional interests and among different tribes.

In the early 1750s — more than three decades before the U.S. Constitution was written — Franklin was painfully aware how united French forces routinely exploited the differences among the fledgling British Colonies. He saw in the Haudenosaunee constitution a path for his own people.

“It would be very strange,” Franklin wrote to a friend in 1751, “if six nations of ignorant savages should be capable of forming a scheme for such a union, and be able to execute it in such a manner as that it has subsisted for ages, and appears indissoluble, and yet that a like union should be impracticable for ten or a dozen colonies, to whom it is more necessary and must be more advantageous.”

Gratuitous insults aside, Franklin incorporated those ideas in his plans for a new government in the Americas; the Great Law is often cited as one of the inspirations for the Constitution’s balancing of powers.

The map, meanwhile, was made by the famed anthropologist Lewis Henry Morgan. Born in 1818 in Rochester, New York, Morgan was a lawyer and state senator but is far more lastingly known as a founder of scientific anthropology.

Like Franklin, he was fascinated with the Haudenosaunee. He spent so much time with them that the largest nation among them, the Seneca, informally adopted him. While in his early 20s, Morgan founded the “Grand Order of the Iroquois,” a semi-secret fraternal society. The group would dress in Haudenosaunee regalia and chant their war cries as part of their ceremonies.

Such studies led to his first book, “The League of the Ho-de-no-sau-nee, or Iroquois,” in 1851. The book documents the language, fabrics and a map of the nations, and is regarded as a classic in its field.

Iroquois Indians, posing for a panoramic group photo, about 1914. Photo: William A. Drennan. Prints and Photographs Division.

Morgan’s map, says Michael Galban, curator of the Seneca Arts and Culture Center in Victor, New York, was “his impression” of tribal boundaries, giving a false appearance of sharply delineated borders. Boundaries were in reality much more fluid, but Morgan’s map is acknowledged to be generally accurate, he said, even down to its trails and paths.

Today, the Haudenosaunee Confederacy still  operates, maintaining their original traditions, beliefs and values through their own government — which, as Ben Franklin could tell you, had some profound ideas.

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World War II’s “Rumor Control” Project

Office of War Information posters in World War II urged people not to spread rumors or to talk openly of the war effort.

In the summer of 1942, shortly after the United States entered World War II, the newly minted Office of War Information began to try to find out what people were saying about the conflict, from jokes in Georgia to conspiracy theories in California.

The “Rumor Control” campaign, now preserved in the Library’s collections, came and went with the OWI, shutting its doors in 1945 when the war was over. But, for three years, in addition to producing radio series and working with Hollywood to produce heroic films about the war effort, the OWI enlisted secret civilian “reporters” from all over the country to report what their neighbors, coworkers and fellow students were saying about the war.

In short, to spy on one another in the name of patriotism.

It targeted everyday citizens, in small towns and large. The idea was not to identify rumor spreaders by name, but capture what was buzzing around town at barber shops, dentists’ offices, classrooms and so on.

“Our democratic system will not survive the war – the President desires a socialist state,” read one reported rumor from “Seven widely scattered States.” Another: “Japanese treat Negroes as equals – this is a white man’s war. (Seven States, Southeast and Northeast.)” Others reported German submarines that had been sunk of the Florida coast, that the losses at Pearl Harbor had been much worse than had been reported, or that parachutes had been spotted in the central part of Florida and spies were now among us. And so on.

An Office of War Information worksheet sketches out the importance of identifying “rumor carriers.”

The project was taking place at an early stage of mass communications, with radio and newspapers and magazines being dominant and television just coming on the scene. Local rumors couldn’t go viral because there was no technology to make it happen, unlike today’s social media. So the OWI recruited hundreds of everyday Americans – bank workers, taxi drivers, clerks, anyone – to confidentially report  what their fellow citizens were saying in private conversations. Teachers were enlisted to listen in on students.

The natural comparison would be to George Orwell’s “1984,” the dark tale of a government that monitors everything its citizens say and think and encourages its civilians to spy on one another — but that landmark book wouldn’t be written until after World War II.

An editor’s note orders the word “Gestapo” cut from a government document.

In a document that set out the campaign’s methods and goals, organizers took a pseudo-scientific approach to identifying what constituted an actual “rumor,” like it was an odd species of fish; made pen and ink charts of “social networks” along which they spread; and recruited and trained “reporters” on how to memorize bits of conversation, going so far as to develop training skits.

Although much of the OWI’s operations were abroad — creating the same kind of disinformation to target enemy populations that they were guarding against at home — their domestic programs were controversial from the start. Lots of people in congress and people on their front porches did not like the idea of domestic government spying, no matter what it was called.  Several employees resigned in a high-profile protest, and, over the years, a few others were discovered to be Soviet agents. The only significant part of the program that wasn’t shut down at war’s end was the Voice of America, which broadcasts news around the world to this day.

Some of the OWI slogans seeped into pop culture. The most famous was “Loose Lips Sink Ships,” a War Advertising Council phrase that was used on OWI posters. It  became a pop-culture idiom used to urge discretion in almost any setting, often light-heartedly.

But even in the depths of war, the OWI seemed aware of the perils of a democratic nation urging citizens to report on one another, and cautioned that “care must be taken to prevent the community from feeling that a Gestapo is being organized.” An editor, red pen in hand, underlined “Gestapo” and, apparently without a sense of irony, scribbled in the margin, “can’t say in a govt. document.”

It’s a line Orwell might have penned himself.

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We’ll Miss You, Jerry Pinkney

Jerry Pinkney designed the Library’s 2005 poster for the National Book Festival..

This is a guest post by Naomi Coquillon, Chief of Informal Learning, Center for Learning, Literacy and Engagement.

Our team was left saddened by news of the passing of renowned illustrator Jerry Pinkney last week. Pinkney, whose career spanned more than 50 years, was a gifted visual storyteller with a unique style that was quickly recognizable. He garnered many awards for his work, including the Caldecott Medal for his book “The Lion and the Mouse,” which he both wrote and illustrated, and multiple Coretta Scott King awards for illustration.

Many of us at the Library grew up with his work, had the pleasure of meeting him at National Book Festival events, and have shared his work with our children. That was certainly the case for me—I recall his cover illustration for “Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry” quite vividly from my childhood and read his version of Aesop’s Fables with my six-year-old this fall. A colleague recounted  the joy she felt at meeting Pinkney at her New Jersey elementary school more than 30 years ago — while we were both sitting backstage with him on September 26, less than one month ago, during the 2021 National Book Festival. There, he spoke about his most recent book, a reimagining of the story of “The Little Mermaid,” in both a live Q&A session  and in conversation with author Meg Medina.

Pinkney had a long relationship with the NBF. In 2002, the second year of the festival, the Pinkney family—Jerry; his wife and frequent collaborator, Gloria; his son Brian and daughter-in-law Andrea, a children’s book illustrator and author, respectively—spoke together at the event. It was recorded and is available in two parts, here and here. In 2005, Pinkney designed the festival poster; we still receive requests for prints. You can find recordings of many of Pinkney’s appearances at the Library on our website, but I’ll include Pinkney’s short but powerful statement on his love of reading, and the value of pictorial literacy from 2016 below.

“I’m dyslexic. And so reading to me is challenging and it always has been as a kid. Yet I could also tell you that I love reading. Because I understand, one, that in many ways in order to succeed. . . you’ve got to be able to see the world. You’ve got to be able to understand others. . . I think I’m a great advocate for reading, but I also want to be an advocate for pictorial literacy. There are many ways of reading the world. “

Thank you, Jerry Pinkney.

Introducing Unfolding History: Manuscripts at the Library of Congress

Manuscript Division archivists make sense of materials that often come to them folded, bundled, stacked, or mangled. Pictured is a suitcase holding an addition to the papers of actor-director Eva Le Gallienne. It turned out to hold a letter from half-sister Hesper describing ships massing on the English coast for D-Day, and setting out for France “like ghosts in the pale light.”

The Manuscript Division is starting their own blog, as their treasure trove of documents is both (a) amazing and (b) endless. This introductory post was written by Josh Levy, a historian of science and technology in that division. 

There are a lot of stories folded into the collections of the Library’s Manuscript Division, and it’s time to share them in a new way.

Those stories come from one of the world’s most extensive archives related to American history. They are found in collections that document our political, social, cultural, military, and scientific pasts. And there are a lot of collections: more than 12,000 of them, which together encompass more than 70 million items. Among them are the personal papers of presidents and artists, judges and activists, generals and poets, scientists and nurses, and transformative organizations like the NAACP and the Works Progress Administration. More are added every year.

Unfolding History: Manuscripts at the Library of Congress is a new blog that aims to offer a wider window into those collections. Here, our historians, archivists, and reference librarians will share stories about exciting new discoveries and items that catch their eye.

We’ll pull back the curtain on the whole life cycle of an archival collection, from its arrival at our doorstep – sometimes in perfect order, sometimes in a jumbled mass – to the intricate puzzle work our archivists do to make it accessible, to the evolving insights it yields as our reference librarians and historians help researchers explore it over and over again, across generations. In other words, we’ll bring you into the fold. And bring you stories we hope will spark new research ideas, find their way into your classrooms, and pause your scrolling during lunch hour.

So join us, as the Manuscript Division works to collect the unique documents, digital files, and objects that can help current and future generations probe, understand, and continually reconsider what matters about our past and present. Join us, as history unfolds.